


The Constant Lover

by Licoriceallsorts



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Multi, Possibly dub con since alcohol is involved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:46:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Licoriceallsorts/pseuds/Licoriceallsorts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Constant Lover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Octorawk](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Octorawk).



After the Meteor Crisis, Elmyra Gainsborough, lately of No. 1 Waterfall Street, Under Sector Five, Midgar, and now residing at 52 Half-Moon Street, Kalm, stopped receiving her monthly pension cheque, as did all the other Shinra war widows. Thanks to the collapse of the company, the payments system had broken down: the banks were in disarray and the records had been lost when Diamond Weapon attacked the Shinra Building. Aware that Aerith's mother would be strapped for cash, Tseng of the Turks took time out of his busy schedule to travel to Kalm and resolve the situation. He knew she wouldn't accept any money from him personally, so he told her that for the time being Shinra was paying pensions in hard gil, until the banks got up and running again. In fact, the money he gave her had come from his own pocket.

 One of the first things Rufus did, once he managed to get a grip on what was left of the company, was re-boot the pension system. The records were painstakingly pieced back together, and every claim carefully investigated; there were a lot of scammers about trying to take advantage of the turmoil to claim money that was not rightfully theirs.  Tseng, however, continued to pay Elmyra's pension with his own money, visiting her once a month to put it into her hand. To say that he felt he owed it to Aerith would be going too far. What he owed to Aerith could never be repaid, and certainly not in gil.  He kept an eye on Elmyra for his own sake. It helped him feel connected to Aerith, and ensured he did not forget the past.

 In the beginning his visits were brief. They talked about neutral, practical things: the price of fresh vegetables, the weather, her roof repairs. Sometimes she gave him a cup of tea. As time passed and his memories of Aerith began to lose their freshness, he felt an increasing need to talk about her with Elmyra. At first, whenever he mention Aerith's name, Elmyra immediately shut the conversation down. She felt (he believed) that he had no right to reminisce about Aerith. Or perhaps she didn't want to share her memories with him. He could understand that. Shinra had already taken so much from her... Although Aerith's death, at least, could not be laid at the company door. Or only indirectly.

 He persisted, and after a while she realised he wasn't trying to take anything away from her. He was afraid of forgetting; he needed Elmyra to help him keep his memories true. When she realised this, she started opening up to him a little more, and gradually they came to understand one another better.

 She didn't have many other visitors. Elmyra had come to Kalm with Marlene, on Barret's advice, fleeing Shinra. She hadn't known anybody here. Her whole life, until the dropping of Sector Seven, had been lived in the slums of Midgar. Now her old neighbourhood was broken up and her friends dead or scattered to the winds. She had some nodding acquaintances in Kalm, neighbours she might stop to chat with, but few people that she would invite into her home. Tseng didn't ask about her relations with the surviving members of AVALANCHE.

Right after the Meteor Crisis, everybody was so busy trying to stay alive and rebuild some sort of normality that they had little time to dwell on themselves and their losses. Each day survived was another victory. Every pair of hands was useful. Elmyra nursed the sick; she went up a ladder with a hammer to repair damaged houses; she baked and distributed bread; she started a vegetable garden and gave her produce away to anyone who was hungry; she volunteered at a W.R.O. registration station set up to reunite lost children with their parents. Gradually, though, as things settled down and economy picked up, as the banks reopened and people started new businesses and money began circulating freely again, there seemed to be less and less need for a woman like Elmyra: a mother without a child, a homemaker without anybody to make a home for.

Tseng noticed that Elmyra's house was not looking as spick and span as it used to. The flowers she had cultivated so assiduously right after Meteorfall were being allowed to wither and die. She neglected herself, too. The world was recovering from its brush with death, and despite the geostigma epidemic many people, especially the younger people, were feeling more and more optimistic. However, it was obvious to Tseng that without her child to plan and dream for, Elmyra had lost interest in her own future.

The older one gets, the more difficult it becomes to replace lost friends with new ones. Tseng was beginning to learn this for himself. Nor could one child be a substitute for another.  All the same, their healing world was full of orphans needing love, and Elmyra needed someone to reattach her to life.

 Late one dark and stormy night she answered her doorbell to find Tseng standing on the doorstep holding the hand of a very small, drenched child - a dark-haired, dark-eyed boy such as he must once have been. "Is this your son?" she asked him.

            "No. I found him just now, wandering on the roadside," Tseng lied.

            He had taken his time choosing a child from among the orphans at the WRO facility in Edge. This one spoke only Wutaian, and would not be able to contradict the fiction Tseng was weaving around him.

            "I almost drove right into him," he added.

            He had chosen the child who looked most like him, because a child who was like him would, de facto, be the least like Aerith that any child could be. He didn't know much about children, but he knew, instinctively, that this would make it easier for Elmyra.

            "I think he's hungry," said Tseng. "He looks as if he hasn't had a square meal in days."

            "You should take him to the orphanage."

            "I'm on my way to Healen. I'm already half an hour late. I can't take a child with me. Could you...?"

            "You'll come back for him tomorrow?"

            "If I can. The day after tomorrow, certainly. Thank you, Elmyra."

            She didn't ask for the boy's name. Perhaps she knew Tseng was lying. She was shrewd. He drove away wondering if he'd done the right thing. He'd just given her a child as if it were puppy. Well, if it didn't work out he could always take the kid back to the orphanage.  The big backhander the WRO childcare worker had demanded before she would let him take the boy without proper paperwork was a write-off, in any case.

 Business kept him away from Kalm for a week. On his next visit, he found the two of them in the garden, the boy building a fortress out of sticks, Elmyra weeding.

            "The orphanage in Edge is full," he said. "Even when I offered them a bribe, they weren't interested."

            Elmyra had certain looks, certain facial expressions, that reminded him of Aerith. She gave him one now. "The boy's been no trouble," she said.

            "We have a trade delegation going to Wutai at the end of the month," he said. "I can ask Reno to make inquiries. I could ask Reeve Tuesti to talk to Miss Kisaragi..."

            "That might be best. Tea?"

            She had made a lemon cake as well. The boy climbed into the chair next to Tseng's and sat with his little legs dangling. "His name is Woo," she told Tseng. "At least, that's what I think he said."

            "Woo? That's no good. The other kids will tease him."

            "Tease him?"

            "Woo the Woot. We'll have to change it."

            She gave him another Aerith-look. He thought for a moment she was going to ask him what names he had been called (oh, where would he begin?) but she only said, "When Woo goes back to Wutai it won't matter, will it?"

            She put two spoonfuls of honey in the boy's tea, none in Tseng's.

            Later, as he was going out the door, she said, "The boy needs new shoes."

            He took out his wallet and gave her some gil. "I'd like to know where you buy _your_ shoes," she laughed, peeling off three notes and handing them back. "That's more than enough for two pairs." She tucked the remaining notes into the pocket of her apron. She was smiling.

 .

            About a month later he was driving down Silence Street, on his way to pick up Reeve Tuesti from the W.R.O. building for a trip out to Healen Lodge, when a toyshop window display caught his eye. He was a little ahead of schedule, so he stopped the car and got out. Right in the middle of the window stood a large, beautiful, hand-carved model sailboat, painted white, with a red sail and the name _Tiger-Lily_ written in looping cursive across her stern. When Tseng was Woo's age he had thought the Fountain in Sector Eight would be the perfect place to sail toy ships, maybe even stage a mock naval battle, but he had never mentioned this idle dream to Commander Veld and in any case, he had not owned any toys.

            He went in and bought the sailboat.

            As he was coming out of the shop, he saw Tifa Lockheart walking down the street towards him, holding a shopping bag in one hand and Barret Wallace's daughter by the other. She saw him in the same moment that he saw her. Her pace slowed. She nudged Marlene behind her, all the time keeping her eyes fixed on him, like a wary mother cat.

            He thought it was surprising that they didn't run into each other more often, since he was always coming to Edge on business and she lived here with the Wallace girl and Cloud Strife... Although if rumour were to be believed, Strife was away more often than he was at home these days. Rude had once found him sleeping rough in Aerith's church. Tseng had told the Turks to keep an eye on him, but leave him be as long as he did no damage.

            He put the sailboat into the boot of the car, where Rufus wouldn't see it and ask questions, and then he got behind the wheel and set off for the W.R.O. building, giving a wide berth to Lockheart and the little Wallace as he passed by. Looking in the rear view mirror, he could see her watching him drive way. Making sure he cleared out of the neighborhood, he supposed.

 .

            Two days later he was walking up Elmyra's path with the sailboat in his arms when her front door opened and Tifa Lockheart came out. She stopped dead when she saw him. "You," she said.

            The sailboat was far too big for him to hide it behind his back. He felt faintly ridiculous.

            "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

            It was clear from her tone that unless he admitted he was here to rob, kidnap, maim, rape, and swindle the lady of the house, she would not believe a word he said.

            "The same as you, I imagine," he answered mildly. "I come here quite often, as it happens."

            "What's that?"

            "A toy sailboat."

            The cognitive dissonance was almost too much for her. She stared at him, open-mouthed.

            He didn't want to push past her, but neither did he want the two of them to continue standing on this front path bristling at each other. He really had no quarrel with Lockheart. She seemed like a decent, caring woman, for an ex-terrorist. Strife was the one he couldn't forgive.

            "Is that child in there yours?" she demanded. "Did you foist him off onto her?"

            "Interesting choice of words. Is that what Wallace did with his brat, foist her off onto you?"

            "How dare you - "

            Behind her the front door opened again and Woo came out, followed by Elmyra. A smile lit up Woo's face when he saw the toy sailboat. He was a smart kid; he knew the boat was for him. Who else could it be for? He was the only kid around.

            "We'll never fit that in the bathtub," said Elmyra.

            "I'll take him down to the beach."

            "It's too far. It's nearly time for his tea."

            "I have a car."

            "The wind will blow it out to sea."

            "We'll tie a string to it."

            She threw her hands up. "Have it your way. Just bring him back before dark."

            "I can only stay for an hour."

            "Come back for some tea before you go."

            Tseng opened the car door for Woo the way he did for Rufus, and helped him climb into the front passenger seat, which was _not_ something he did for Rufus, although Rufus always sat in front when it was just the two of them, and often took the wheel himself, when he felt up to it.

            Tifa Lockheart stood on the path watching him drive away; it was like a deja vue of their last encounter. Her face was full of questions. He made no doubt she was planning to extract the answers from Elmyra.

            Lockheart was, of course, a beautiful woman, a woman whose breasts had, during the height of the Crisis, been a matter of considerable speculation (and light relief) among his underlings regarding their cup size, nipple colour and circumference, degree of firmness and general shape. Rude was sure she wore a bra. He said he'd seen the straps. Reno swore she did not. Those straps were her suspenders. The two of them might even have had a bet on it; Tseng couldn't remember what the outcome had been.  Lockheart's was the kind of rack that distracted drivers, inspired poets, and silenced all argument. They were definitely the first thing you noticed about her. Maybe, often, they were the only thing people noticed.  But as Tseng drove away, the thought occurred to him that her eyes were worth looking at, too. Wine-coloured. Unusual. Quiet and thoughtful. It would be easy to ignore them, given the party that was going on below. Many men must have made that mistake; Tseng was pretty sure it wasn't Lockheart's eyes that had held Rude mesmerised while she kicked his ass.

. 

            His visits to Elmyra and little Woo continued. Occasionally he met Lockheart coming or going, sometimes on her own and sometimes with Marlene Wallace. If Lokheart was already there when he arrived, he told Elmyra he was only passing through and could not stop; if she arrived while he was there, he would remember some urgent business the President needed him to attend to. Elmyra had a right to a home where her friends felt comfortable, and he didn't want Lockheart or the Wallace kid to start staying away out of fear they might be forced to endure his company.

            Woo's language skills were developing fast; he and Elmyra could hold conversations now. She asked him what name he would like to be called. He said Dog. "You can't name a child Dog," said Tseng. "Call him Wolfie. That's a good name for a boy. The way he eats, it suits him."

            "Wolfie what?" said Elmyra.

            They didn't talk any more about sending the boy to Wutai, but Elmyra was always finding new lines to draw in the sand.

            Tseng looked around the room. Wolfie Tablecoth? Wolfie Sink? Wolfie Window? For a kid, a name was a kind of armour. He didn't want to leave any weak links. His eye fell on the vase of roses in the centre of the table. "Wolfie Thorn," he said. No schoolyard bully was going to mess with a kid named Wolfie Thorn.

            A kid who went to sleep every night cuddling a giant toy sailboat in his arms.

   .        

            Another time he arrived to find Tifa and Elmyra sitting in the kitchen eating freshly-baked raisin scones and drinking mint tea. He began to say, "I'm only passing through," but Tifa interrupted him. "Don't leave. Please. I'd hate to think I was driving Elmyra's - friends away."

            That pause spoke volumes.

            "The children are in the garden," said Elmyra. "Go on through."

            Marlene Wallace had set up school under the big tree. A large piece of paper taped to an upended cardboard box was her blackboard. On it she had written _A B C 1 + 1 = 2._ Her pupils were a stuffed jumping that had lost an ear, a tonberry plushie, a hairless doll, a toy sailboat, and Wolfie.

            "Now repeat after me, children," said Marlene Wallace sternly, tapping her cardboard box with a stick. "One plus one equals two. How much does one and one equal? Who can tell me? Wolfie?"

            Wolfie did not answer. He was too busy making a gun out of some clicky blocks in his lap. Tseng felt proud of him.

            "Bad boy," said Marlene. "I'm going to have to put you in the naughty corner."

            "You're a bossy little girl, aren't you?" said Tseng.

            Marlene planted her hands on her hips and stared up at him with all her father's pugnaciousness. "I'm not scared of _you_. I'm not scared of _anything._ "

            Someone - Lockheart? - had tied the girl's hair back with a pink ribbon just like Aerith's. He wished they wouldn't do that.

            "Then you're making a mistake," he said. "There are some things in life you should be scared of. Come on, boy, let's go sail that boat for a while before supper."

            Wolfie scrambled to his feet and went pelting off down the path that led round to the front of the house, where he knew Tseng's car would be waiting. The Wallace girl looked crestfallen. Tseng told himself she deserved it.

            Later, when he and the boy returned with their hair all windblown and their shoes (his expensive black loafers!) full of sand, Lockheart confronted him at the door. She let the boy run inside, then moved to block Tseng's path. "Did you _have_ to leave Marlene behind? She was heart-broken."

            "Are you saying you would have trusted me to look after her?"

            Lockheart hesitated. She had an honest face. Fundamentally she was an honest woman; she wouldn't lie simply to make him feel bad. "If you had told me where you were going, I could have come with you."

            "Sorry." What else could he say? "Maybe next time. I must go now, I'm late. Will you say good-bye to Elmyra for me?" He turned to leave.

            "Hey - " she said. "Um - Tseng - "

            "Yes?"

            "Look, there's been something I've been meaning to say. I - I owe you an apology. That boy, Wolfie - You did a good thing there. He's been just what she needed. To be honest, I was a bit... Well, that doesn't matter. The thing is, I'd been telling her for months that she needed another child in her life. There's no shortage of motherless children desperate for someone to love them, and she has so much love to give. But she wouldn't listen to me. She would never have taken this step by herself. So... yeah. Anyway - thank you."

            "You don't need to thank me. I didn't do it for you."

            "You did it for Aerith, didn't you?"

            He wasn't comfortable with the turn this conversation was taking. Better to end it now, before she trespassed any further. "Your apology is accepted. I must go.  Good-day, Miss Lockheart."

.           

            The Old President used to say (when explaining to the other executives why Scarlet was yet again getting the lion's share of the rate hike) that once a woman gets a bee in her bonnet there's no power on earth can turn her aside from her purpose. It soon became apparent to Tseng that Tifa Lockheart had decided to _take an interest_ in him. On the days when their paths crossed at Elmyra's house, she would insist on driving down to the beach with him and Wolfie, whether Marlene was with her or not, and would stand there in the cold north wind with her hands tucked into her armpits, her bare midriff turning all goosepimply, asking him seemingly innocuous questions such as whether he'd ever learned how to sail a real boat, and did it he find it as hard as she did getting used to seeing the sea right on Midgar's, she meant Edge's, doorstep, and how old had he been when he left Wutai?

            Tseng understood perfectly well that what Lockheart really wanted to know, in her clumsy, roundabout way, was how somebody who had once been a boy like Wolfie could have become a man like him. The answer, of course, was _by degrees_.  She wasn't lacking in intelligence; she ought to be able to figure that out for herself. Tseng wasn't in the habit of talking about himself, didn't find himself an interesting topic of conversation, and thought people who did find themselves interesting were bores - with the sole exception of Rufus, who actually was interesting, and could still surprise him, even after all these years.

. 

            Rufus was dying. Most people weren't aware he was still alive. The Turks didn't broadcast the fact, but they didn't go out of their way to conceal it either. Anyone who came to Healen Lodge might happen to see him, if it was one of his good days. A man could spend a long time dying. Weeks, months, years. The pain was excruciating sometimes; black sores, weeping a rancid, tar-like substance, had formed on top of the bone deep scars that were the legacy of Diamond Weapon's attack. On his bad days Rufus lay in a darkened room biting on a towel so that no one would hear him scream. On his good days he made ward rounds, visited with the other patients, consulted with doctors, had meetings with engineers, with architects, with his bankers, with Reeve. He spoke about the future as if he would be there to see it. Tseng lived from day to day.

            Lockheart had a sick child of her own, a boy Strife had found outside Aerith's church. This kid didn't have many good days, but once or twice she brought him along with Marlene to visit Elmyra. Tseng's impression was of a painfully, pathetically well-behaved lost soul. They all drove to the beach. The children built a sandcastle, and Lockheart, standing with her arms folded over her heart, the north wind blowing in her hair, told him the boy's parents had died in Sector Seven.

            "I'm sorry." Again, what else could he say? _That should never have happened?_ But it did happen. _I wish I'd done things differently?_ Why should she care?

            Should he tell her that Rufus had done nothing to deserve his suffering either, that he hadn't been part of the decision to drop the plate and had been appalled when he heard about it, that he'd known very little about anything that went on in the last days of the old regime, since his father, who did not trust him - and with good reason - had insisted on keeping him out of the loop? The sins of the fathers were visited on the sons. According to Lockheart, the boy's parents had worked for Shinra.

            Tseng was a problem-solver, not an apologiser or a maker of excuses. He said, "In that case, Denzel's probably entitled to a dependent's allowance, until he turns fifteen.  I could look into it."

            "No. Really, I - it's all right. We're not after money. That's not why we took him in."

            He almost suggested that she could bank it for the kid. Just in time, he remembered.

            The incoming tide started nibbling at the sandcastle's foundations. Seeing that it was going to collapse anyway, the children kicked their handiwork to pieces and trampled gleefully on the ruins. Lockheart joined in. The cold wind had whipped her hair into a tangled halo round her head. Her pale cheeks glowed with colour. "Come on, join us," she called to him. "It's fun!"

            He was rather curious to know whether Strife and Wallace were aware that their children played with the bogeyman when Tifa brought them to visit Aerith's mother. But he didn't ask. What lies she told or didn't tell to the significant others in her life were really none of his business.

            Back at Elmyra's house, they found a gentleman caller sitting in the kitchen chair that Tseng normally used when he visited. Tifa greeted him warmly; clearly she had met him several times before. Elmyra introduced Tseng as _a friend of my late daughter's_ , which he thought was generous of her. "Sigurd Pedersen," said the other man, shaking Tseng's hand. "Ex-retired railway engineer and all round general purpose mechanic." He was looking pretty much at home in that chair, and Elmyra was looking pretty happy to have him there.

            She laid some papers on the table for Tseng to sign. Wolfie would be starting school next month, and somebody had to take responsibility for the fees.

            It occurred to him, as he drove back to Healen, that perhaps he ought to open a trust fund for the two of them. That way, if anything were to happen to him, at least he could be sure they would be all right.

            He thought about Tifa too, as he drove home. Holding hands with the children, dancing madly on the sand in the red sunset glow. It reminded him of Aerith, and how desperately she had longed to see the world, to go out and about in it, seizing life with both hands, until she found her promised land. It had been his job to protect her.  She and Rufus were so alike. Would Tifa want to believe him if he told her this? The night the old President was killed, Tseng had been the one who brought Rufus back from Junon. A strong wind had been blowing. The helicopter wasn't easy to control. They'd circled the building, Tseng wondering how the hell he was expected to land with so many people milling about on the pad, when he realised to his horror that one of those people was Aerith. He might even have spoken her name aloud. Rufus, taking advantage of his distraction, had quickly unbuckled his seat belt and grabbed Dark Nation's collar and the two of them had jumped out, landing on the Presidential balcony ten feet below where Palmer stood blubbering and quivering like the jelly he was.

            Tseng was forced to swing wide. He made another circle round the building. The first thing he saw as he came around was Rufus, squaring off with his shot-gun against the escaped lunatic in the SOLDIER uniform. The second thing he saw was Aerith descending in one of the glass elevators with that trigger-happy Wallace and Hojo's rabid dog. They'd reached the sixty-fifth floor when the glass blew out: Wallace had started firing bullets at a security robot. And Tseng could do nothing about it, nothing to help either of them: all he could do was hover uselessly in midair and watch as the two people he loved most in the world did their best to get themselves killed.

            And now Aerith was dead and Rufus was dying.

            He had to pull off the road for a bit, cover his face with his hands, calm himself down, before he could see clearly enough to continue driving.

 .

            Not long after this, the world changed, as their world was wont to do, and for a while he had no time to visit Elmyra. He was too busy searching for Jenova's head in the Northern Crater, getting himself captured, being tortured, expecting to die, surprising himself by the quantity and sheer intensity of his regrets; then getting rescued by Vincent Valentine (rather a humiliating situation to find oneself in, when all was said and done, since Valentine could hardly have been described as an ace Turk during his days with the department); snatching Rufus _yet again_ from the jaws of death ("I don't know what your problem is, Tseng. I'm dying anyway; it was worth the gamble. Anyway, I thought you were dead") and finally getting rained on, which seemed at first like the tin lid on a pretty fucking awful day, but turned out to be the beginning of the rest of their lives.

            Now that he was no longer dying Rufus was eager to make up for lost time. He kept Tseng very busy on all sorts of projects, flying back and forth to Wutai, among other things, and it was almost two months before he found himself with an evening free to spend in Kalm. He was pleasantly surprised to find Tifa there too, with Marlene and Denzel. The incident with the remnants had gone a long way toward dispelling the suspicion with which the surviving members of Avalanche viewed the surviving employees of Shinra, and vice-versa; he wished he could claim a bigger share of the credit for this, but he knew that most of it was down to Rude and Reno's willingness to provide Cloud with back-up, and to Rufus' dramatic death-defying plunge off the edge of that half-built high-rise, firing his shotgun all the way down, which had been recorded for posterity on the cellphone of a man in a woolly cap who happened to standing on the street-corner. For almost a week you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing Rufus Shinra falling. Tseng supposed the public found this satisfying in a variety of ways. Princess Kisaragi, who had been an eyewitness to the entire scene, had announced that she was officially impressed by the President's balls.

            Elmyra couldn't chat for long; Pedersen was taking her out to dinner with one of his grown children. Tifa had volunteered to stay the night, to babysit. Once Elmyra and Pedersen had left, Wolfie tugged at Tseng's hand and begged him to play a game of parcheesi with them. Tifa's expression, listening to their exchange, was priceless. This was probably something she thought she'd never see, the hardened assassin turned to putty in the hands of a child. Tseng could have her told it wasn't the first time. He had a lot of experience with babysitting.

            The problem with parcheesi was that you couldn't cheat to lose. Denzel didn't mind losing, but Wolfie did. The gloating when he won was almost worse. Marlene had to speak to him sharply. It was like being back in the office.

            After the third game, Tifa told them in a tone that brooked no opposition, "That's enough now. Time for bed."

            "I'll read the bedtime story," Marlene announced. "I've already chosen it."

            "Not the one about the butterflies?" asked Wolfie anxiously.

            "Just let her have her own way," Denzel whispered to him. "It's easier."

            "Okay," Wolfie whispered back.

            Tifa kissed them each goodnight. The boys went tearing up the stairs, pushing and shoving. "Brush your teeth," Tifa called after them.

            "I'll make sure they do," said Marlene.  She hovered uncertainly by Tifa's side for a moment, looking at Tseng, evidently wondering if she ought to give him a good-night kiss as well - and because she was a well-brought-up, fair-minded little girl, she decided that, yes, kissing him would be the polite thing to do, so she darted over and planted a quick peck on his cheek before fleeing up the stairs as if all the hounds of hell were on her tail.

            His cheek burned. The last person to offer him such an innocent kiss had been Aerith, when _she_ was six years old. He had to fight against the urge to touch his fingers to the spot where the child's lips had brushed his skin. He didn't want Tifa to get the wrong idea. There were so many wrong ideas she could get.

            Tifa rose from the sofa and disappeared into the kitchen. "I'm making coffee," she called to him. "Do you want one?"

            "Yes. Thank you. Black. No sugar."

            "I think I might have been able to guess that."

            She put the mug down on the table beside his chair and switched on the TV. A chocobo racing  documentary had just started.  "I know all about this," she told him, curling back into the sofa that stood at right angles to his own armchair, which had a reclining back and a footrest that shot up when he pulled a lever. "Why do you want to watch it, then?" he asked her.

            "There's nothing else. Oh, look, Chocobo Joe and Teioh the Invincible. I raced against them once, at Gold Saucer."

            "I didn't know you were a famous chocobo jockey."

            "I have all sorts of hidden talents."

            "And did you vanquish the Invincible Teioh?"

            "I came second." She paused. "Cloud won."

            "Tee-faaa," called Marlene from the bedroom, "Denzel and Wolfie are pillow fighting. They're going to break something."

            "Coming..."

            She went upstairs. The documentary continued to play on the screen, but Tseng had no interest in chocobo racing. He preferred to contemplate Tifa Lockheart. Out of all the surviving members of Avalanche, it seemed to him that she was the only one who would have made a good Turk. Strife was too arrogant and couldn't take orders, Wallace was a loose cannon, and Nanaki - well, Nanaki was a dog. Or a cat, possibly. If it weren't for his lack of opposable thumbs he could have been a contender. Cid Highwind did whatever he damn well pleased with a reckless disregard for the safety of himself and others.  Valentine wasn't interested in returning to the department, and in any case, whatever he was now, as a Turk he had never been more than second-rate. What kind of Turk allowed Hojo, of _all_ people, to get the drop on him? Tseng would have shut himself up in a coffin out of sheer embarrassment. As for Yuffie Kisaragi, her destiny lay elsewhere, though not as far removed from his own as Tseng would have liked.  But Tifa -

            Tifa was intelligent and self-disciplined. She honoured her commitments. She packed a punch that could knock Rude flat. And she was undyingly loyal to someone - or some _thing_ ; an ideal? - that perhaps did not entirely deserve quite that degree of devotion, which some would say had for many years been one of the Turks' defining qualities.

            Not to mention the fact that her curves would look great in a suit. Yes, that would definitely be a sight worth seeing. Too bad she made such terrible coffee. He went into the kitchen, threw it down the sink, and made a fresh pot, strong the way he liked it.

            Tifa came back downstairs. "They'll be asleep soon," she said. "Marlene's read them the riot act."

            "Sometimes she reminds me a lot of Aerith," said Tseng. "At her age."

            "Really?" Tifa's tone was neutral; Tseng couldn't tell if she was pleased or not. "You should tell her. She'll be thrilled."

            "I doubt it. Aerith was a bossy little busybody when she was small."

            Tifa smiled faintly. "Maybe don't tell her _that_. Marlene worships Aerith."

            "She barely knew her."

            "Elmyra's told her a lot about her. And of course, she's heard all our stories. Sometimes, when she has a difficult decision to make... Here's a good example. It's her birthday next month. We've been planning a big party. There's one girl in her class that she really doesn't like, and she didn't want to invite her. I told her that she couldn't leave just one person out, because that would be hurtful, so she either had to invite everyone, or she could have a sleepover with three of her closest friends. She was angry with me for giving her that choice, and she stormed up to her room, but a little while later she came down and asked me, 'Tifa, I've been wondering. What do you think Aerith would do?'"

            _Cute story_ , thought Tseng.

            Maybe she saw the look on his face. She said, "Marlene knows that Aerith saved her life. She may have forgiven you, but she hasn't forgotten."

            Oh, this woman knew where to lay her punches. What did she want from him, an apology?

            "You've been dying to ask me about Aerith for months now," he said. "Maybe it's time we got that over with. Go on. What do you want to know?"

            Tifa sat up and leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees, dark bangs sweeping across her forehead. "I could never understand why she didn't hate you. I would have hated you. I _did_ hate you."

            "Perfectly reasonable, under the circumstances."

            "She told Cloud that you were one of the few people in the world who really knew her."

            "That's probably true."

            "He didn't want to hear it. He couldn't stand to see her crying over you."

            "I thought Strife only heard what he wanted to hear."

            She looked hurt. "That's not fair. You know what he's been through."

            Fair? What did that have to do with anything? Did this conversation have rules all of a sudden?

            "I don't want to talk about Cloud," she said - as if he was the one who had brought Cloud's name up.

            "Fine," he said.

            "There's something I want to ask you."

            "You can ask. I can't promise I'll answer."

            "Did you love her?"

            That was an easy one. "Yes."

            Tifa closed her eyes. "Then why... Why did you do it? Why did you take her?"

            Another easy one. "It was my job."

            "Did you have to _hit_ her?"

            "Evil should look like evil, don't you think?"

            "She never thought you were evil. She said you were only trying to protect her."

            "She always forgave too easily - "

            His throat closed up. He couldn't say any more.

            "Cloud hit her too." Tifa offered this information to him the way one might offer a handkerchief, some form of consolation. As if it would make him feel _better_ to know that he and Strife had this beating-Aerith thing in common.  "He didn't mean to. He hated himself for it. He wasn't in his right mind. It was Sephiroth, controlling him. She knew that. I believe it was why she left us. She didn't want to put Cloud through that again."

            "I should never have let her get involved with any of you in the first place."

            "That's a silly thing to say. You can't stand in the way of fate - "

            "It wasn't fate," he snapped. "Don't be stupid. There's no such thing as fate. It was carelessness on my part. My job was to ensure her safety. But I allowed her happiness to become too important to me. I let her take too many risks. If I had done my duty and brought her in sooner, even one day sooner, she would never have met any of you, and she would still be alive."

            "Hojo was _experimenting_ on her," Tifa exclaimed.

            "Rufus would have put a stop to that."

            She looked doubtful. "But... Tseng, you know - if it weren't for Aerith, we'd all be dead. No one else could have cast Holy."

            "She didn't have to die to cast Holy."

            "If she hadn't gone to the Forgotten City - "

            "She didn't have to go there. She could have cast it from the church. I would have taken her down there if she'd asked me. I would have taken her to the Forgotten City if that's where she wanted to go.  All she had to do was ask me. She didn't need to die. I know she didn't _want_ to die. Aerith was no saint. She was just a girl who loved life and wanted to live it. If we start believing she had to die in order for the rest of us to be saved, then we'll be turning her into something she never was."

            "But, that's exactly what I think," said Tifa.

            "Tee-faa?" A sleepy voice from the bedroom.

            "What is it, Denzel?"

            "I had a bad dream."

            "Oh, poor sweetie. It's okay, I'm coming."

            She went upstairs. He raised his coffee cup to his mouth, but it was empty. The documentary was still running. It felt strange seeing Gold Saucer there on the screen in all its former glory. Sometimes it felt like another life. Sometimes it felt like yesterday. And sometimes it felt as if this life he was living now was nothing but the dream of somebody who was already dead and didn't know it, ephemeral, insubstantial, and ultimately meaningless...

            His phone rang.

            _Rufus_ , he thought.

            It was Elena. She was having a panic attack. She had locked herself out of her new apartment, and she knew she was being a terrible nuisance and she was awfully sorry but could he, could he please, come right _now_?

            Elena had borne up surprisingly well under the remnants' torture. It was seeing Tseng get tortured that had done for her. She had stayed behind in the Crater to protect him after he was shot, blatantly defying his clear order to leave, and not a single day had gone by since when he didn't wish she had obeyed him. She would be fine for a few days, maybe even a week, and then something like this would happen, some trivial thing that made her fall to pieces. When that happened, she became hysterical if she couldn't see him, see with her own eyes that he was alive and well.

            He was reluctant to put her on a disability pension. Even with so many of the old Turks having returned to work, the department was short-staffed, given the demands Rufus was currently making, and when Elena wasn't having a meltdown she was extremely good at her job.  She had implored him not to bench her, and he had been in a position at the time where he really had no choice but to agree. 

            He wanted to say _you're a Turk, Elena, surely you can break into your own apartment?_ He wanted to say, _isn't there anyone else you can call? Your sister?_  He wanted to tell her that he was sorry, truly, deeply, sorry, because he liked her and valued her as an employee - but sleeping together had been a mistake that should never have happened and would never be allowed to happen again.

            "Just hold tight," he said. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

            Tifa was coming down the stairs. "I have to go," he told her, putting his phone away.

            "Trouble?"

            "Elena," he said, and then wondered why he'd told her, when a simple Yes would have sufficed.

            "I'm sorry to hear that. She always comes across as so strong. Drive carefully, won't you? And listen - tell her she and I should start sparring together some time, when she's feeling better. I could really do with someone who'll give me a proper workout."

            As he sped down the dark highway from Kalm to Edge, Tseng did his best to blank out the mental video her words had conjured in his mind's eye. Elena and Tifa, wearing tight black booty shorts and white tank tops, their limbs glistening with sweat, grunting and grappling, rolling over and over each other on the floor mats in the Shinra gym. To no avail.  Tifa's breasts were beyond compare, it was true, but, to be fair, Elena probably had the better arse. Small but solid, perfectly rounded, buns of steel. _Could_ she take down Tifa in a fair fight? Maybe. People would certainly pay to see her try. He should probably not mention that to Rufus.

            He found Elena crouched shivering on her doorstep, arms wrapped round her knees. What else could he do but lift her tenderly up, hug her, stroke her hair, reassure her that she was a brave girl and everything was going to be okay? Two kicks opened her door (flimsy; he would arrange for a better one to be installed), and he carried her inside. She had no trouble persuading him to stay.

            Awaking in the morning in Elena's bed, he wished, briefly, that he had never been born - but he had been and he was here now and wishing wasn't going to get this mess sorted. Elena was deeply asleep. He decided to leave her that way, acknowledging this for the cowardly act that it was, and wrote her note.  _Gone to work_. _You looked so peaceful, I didn't want to wake you. Take the day off. You deserve it._

            This note was less cruel than it appeared. A woman like Tifa would have been able to read between the lines of such a message, but Elena was in a state right now where, like Cloud Strife, she could only hear what she wanted to hear.

.

            Tseng was not the only one who could be cruel. That day his President asked him to fly to Wutai again. Rufus was determined to strike a hard, but fair, bargain, but he also want to make it look like somebody else was twisting his arm. It had to be someone he could trust implicitly, he said.

            While Tseng was finalising his travel arrangements, a man showed up in reception claiming to be an ex-employee, the one-time deputy manager of the logistics department at the branch office in Junon. Tseng sent a secretary down to ask if the man had any papers. She came back and told him that apparently all the man's documentation had been destroyed in Sapphire Weapon's attack. He'd survived geostigma, too. He wasn't after a handout or a pension; now that he had regained his health he wanted to work. She said he'd also told her that he'd once single-handledly fought off an attack by terrorists on the late night train to Sector Seven, and if she didn't believe him she should check the old Shinra newsletters. They'd printed a story all about him, the true-blue company man. Tseng told her to take a photo and run it through their data-base. If the man's face came up positive, she should go through their vacancies, find something he could do, draw up the contract (template in the top drawer, third filing cabinet on the left), put it in Rufus's in-tray, take it down to personnel after he'd signed it, and welcome the man back on the payroll.

            He flew to Wutai. He talked to Godo. Godo didn't like him, which made it easy for Tseng to take a hard line, thus preserving Rufus's newly-minted image as the blue-eyed wonderboy and all round Mr Nice Guy. Negotiations complete, he flew back to Edge. Rufus, however, wasn't satisfied with the arrangements. Tseng flew back to Wutai, sat at one end of a long table with Yuffie beside him and Godo at the other end, talked, flew back to Edge, went to meetings with the WRO and hunkered down with Rufus afterwards to try to work out what Reeve might be plotting, because nothing was straightforward with Reeve, you could never assume that he was acting in his own self-interest or that his schemes were founded on any kind of practical reality. Tseng kept himself busy and avoided Elena, and after about a week his hard work bore fruit in the shape of a formal invitation for Rufus to visit Wutai in person.  Rufus told Tseng that he was excused from this engagement. He'd been working so hard, he deserved some time off. Rude and Cissnei would escort the President to Wutai.

            Tseng saw them off at the heliport, returned to the company offices, continued with his work until five o'clock, then shut and locked his drawers and got in the car to drive to Kalm. Night was falling as he pulled up outside Elmyra's house.

            "Oh, Tseng," she said when she opened the door. "How lovely to see you. I wish I'd known you were coming. We're just on our way out. Sig's taking me to a concert."

            "Where's Wolfie?"

            "He's at a sleepover. I could go get him - "

            "No, don't spoil his fun on my account. "

            "Tifa's here. You should stay and keep her company. Barret took Denzel and Marlene to Rocket Town to visit Cid, so she's all alone." Leaning forward, Elmyra added confidentially, "She just showed up unannounced about an hour ago. I think she's feeling a little down in the dumps."

            Probably something to do with Strife, if the past history of their relationship was anything to go by. Tseng considered making a run for it. He already had one woman falling to pieces on him on a regular basis.

            Then he heard her voice. "Who's at the door, Elmyra?"

            She was standing at the sink doing the washing up, her arms all sudsy up to the elbows, her cheeks flushed from the steam. She had her hair pulled back in that fish-tail style she favoured, and she was wearing leather shorts and some kind of cropped turtleneck sweater thing that showed off her toned mid-riff. There was probably no finer sight in all of Kalm tonight than that smooth flat belly framed by the delicate arch of her hip-bones.

            "It's just Tseng, dear. Well, don't stand there like a stranger, come in. Can you smell the plum wine I've been making? You should try some. I'd love to know what you think. Tifa's going to sell it in her bar. She thinks it'll be very popular. Why don't you take a couple of bottles for that crazy young man you work for?  If he likes it, tell him I could do with an endorsement. This could be a new business for me.  Sig, old man, hurry up! We're going to be late. If you're still here when we get back, Tseng, I'll show you Wolfie's first report card. He's made us very proud."

            Arm in arm Elmyra and her gentleman friend set off down the road towards the town centre. Tseng closed the kitchen door behind them. Tifa was bending over to take two glasses out of the cupboard. A dozen bottles of rich, purple, syrupy plum wine stood on the table. "You have to try it now, you know," she said.

            "Pour me a glass. I'll be back in a minute."

            He needed to use the bathroom. As he was washing his hands he noticed a third toothbrush in the glass beside the sink, and a half-used tube of denture cream. He went back to the kitchen, but Tifa had moved on to the living room and was curled up at one end of the sofa with a blanket over her knees. She had switched on the television: either there was something wrong with the reception, or they were watching a blizzard.  He took the glass she held out to him and said, "Has Pedersen moved in here?"

            "Don't sound so disapproving. She deserves some happiness, and he makes her very happy. I think it's wonderful for both of them."

            Tseng sat down in the recliner.  "I suppose it's a sign that there's hope for us all. What's this about?" The image on the television had changed to a long-shot of a wooden chalet standing at the foot of some forbidding cliffs. "I know that place," said Tifa, sitting up. "That's Holzoff's cabin. We stayed there one night when we were chasing Sephiroth. If it hadn't been for Holzoff, we'd have frozen to death on the Glacier. That was after - after Cloud's run in with Elena at Icicle Inn. Hey, did she say anything about the two of us working out together?"

            "She said it's a great idea," Tseng lied, "But she's a bit tied up with work right now."

            "Well, the offer's open. I really hope Holzoff is all right."

            "He's more than all right," said Tseng. "As of the day before yesterday, he's a millionaire."

            "What?" She laughed in amazement. "How?"

            "He struck gold. The Meteor upheaval melted part of the Glacier and opened up a number of new crevasses. He went out to map them, spotted a gold nugget lying in the snow and when he climbed into the crevasse, he found a seam of gold as wide as my arm."

            "How do you know?"

            Tseng knew because he had been the one who'd supervised the protracted legal wrangling over who owned the Glacier and who had legal claim to the land on which the Glacier sat and the minerals beneath it; he had also been instrumental in persuading the old mountaineer to settle for a sum that would keep him in relative comfort till the end of his days. But Tifa didn't need to know any of this.

            "It's my job to stay informed," he said.

            "Well - my goodness. Lucky Holzoff. It's nice to hear some good news for a change. Speaking of which, Wolfie's report card is on the mantlepiece, if you want to see it."

            'Card' was a misnomer. The paper was tissue-thin. Still, at least there _was_ paper now. For while after Meteor even toilet paper had been hard to find.  

            "He's doing well," said Tifa, "Isn't he?"

            "He's only five years old. At that age, what does an 'A' mean? As long as he's happy and has friends, that's all that matters."

            She turned to look at the television, saw nothing interesting, and returned her attention to him. "I've always wondered. Is it really true that you found him on the side of the road?"

            "No. But don't tell Elmyra."

            "You didn't steal him, did you?"

            "Why would I steal a child when they're practically giving them away? No, I got him from the WRO children's home in Edge. I paid good money for him, too."

            "You know, you don't have to do that."

            "What?"

            "Make yourself sound worse than you really are."

            "No. I suppose it isn't necessary."

            "That's not what I meant. You're not _so_ bad."

            "Not all bad," he corrected her.

            "I think you've changed. Do you think you've changed?"

            _Not enough. There are some things cut right down to the bone. Scars that don't fade. Underground fires that burn for a lifetime._

"I'm thirty-seven years old," he told her.

            "I think we go on changing till the day we die. Look at Elmyra. She's fifty-two, with a new child, a new romance, a new business. I hope I have half her energy when I'm her age. Would you like some more wine?"

            The bottle was almost empty. She must be on her third glass. Why was he counting? She was a big girl; she could count for herself.

            "What do you think of it?" she asked.

            Elmyra's plum wine tasted like fruit cordial and smelt like a pie topped with rum sauce. It seemed harmless, but he suspected it was not. "It goes down easily," he said.

            "You don't have to be polite. I'm sure it's not something you'd drink by choice. You must be a bit of connoisseur, after so many years with ShinRa."

            Not really. Rufus was the one with the delicate palate. Rufus could identify wines blindfolded, from their smell alone. Tseng didn't drink for pleasure. He didn't drink much at all, except when he wanted to get drunk.  Reno's legendary exploits had earned the department a reputation it didn't really deserve; most of them were pretty sober most of the time. He had no doubt this woman could drink him under the table.

            "Tseng," she said, "Do you know who I can't stop thinking about?"

            _Cloud? Rufus? Me?_

"Zack's parents. Did anyone ever tell them what happened to him?"

            "I sent Cissnei to tell them." Tifa looked blank. "She was a friend of his," he explained. "A member of my department."

            "The bad news department."

            He shrugged. "Someone had to do it. Strife couldn't, Aerith wouldn't, you didn't - "

            "I couldn't crush their hopes like that. He was their only child. It's so sad," she sighed.

            Tseng hoped she wasn't going to turn out to be a maudlin drunk. "I'll tell you who else is alive," he said, to get her mind off the subject of Zack. "Roland Palmer."

            "No! Cid's Palmer? I thought that truck had killed him for sure."

            "The layers of fat around his vital organs cushioned the blow. Don't laugh, woman - that is word for word what the doctor told me. Palmer bounced."

            "Oh my god. That's unbelievable. I guess it just goes to show that sometimes it's good for your health to carry a bit of a spare tire. What's he doing now? Is he working with NeoShinRa? Still planning to put a man on the moon?"

            "He married one of Corneo's Honeybees, moved to Icicle Inn, and opened a bakery."

            Tifa gave him a dubious look. "Is that true?"

            "By all accounts he's very happy. Palmer wasn't a bad man. It wasn't his decision to shut the space program. That was an expensive folly, anyway. The Honeybees never had a bad word to say about him, and I always found them to be excellent judges of character."

            "What about Scarlet and Heidegger? Did they survive?"

            "Heidegger's definitely dead. Rude found his body in the wreckage of the Proud Clod. We never found Scarlet, but she hasn't resurfaced, so we presume she's dead as well."

            Tifa's pretty plum-coloured eyes grew wistful. "We weren't trying to kill them, you know. We were trying to get to Hojo, to stop him overloading the reactors. They wouldn't let us through. _They_ attacked us."

            "Listen, you don't need to justify yourself to me. Anyway, what does it matter now? This conversation is becoming morbid. Let's talk about something else."

            Tifa stood up. "I'm going to open another bottle."

            She came back from the kitchen with a bottle in either hand. "Are we planning to get drunk?" he asked her.

            "I am. Will you join me?"

            He let her fill up his glass. When she'd sat down again, he said, "What's brought this on? You don't strike me as someone who makes a habit of drowning her sorrows."

            "Who says I have any sorrows?"

            "When people set out to get drunk, it's usually because they have sorrows."

            "I've been very lucky in my life. I have a successful business and two wonderful children, and I have my health, and I have good friends I can rely on. So many people have lost so much. I'm not complaining."

            "No," he said. "I've noticed that about you."

            She threw back her wine in a couple of gulps. This should have made her look graceless, but instead she seemed... uninhibited. Maybe she kept a wild woman locked up inside that busy mother and long-suffering girlfriend image she projected so well, and every once in a while she had to cut her some slack. Had her original plan been to spend the evening getting drunk on her own? That seemed a little sad. If Tseng ever wanted to spend an evening drinking, at least he knew he could rely on Reno to keep him company. Could she really find no better drinking companion than a middle-aged Turk, who had a litter of sorrows of his own that needed drowning?

            This plum wine was beginning to grow on him. He helped himself to another glass.

            "Oh look," said Tifa, waving her glass at the television. "There's Rufus again."

            The linen bandage gracefully uncoiling from around his throat.  The white layers of suit fluttering like broken wings. The fireball blazing above him. Falling and shooting and falling and shooting...

            Tseng never had flashbacks about the torture, but he often dreamed that he fired the net-gun and missed, and woke himself up shouting Rufus's name.

            The picture on the screen changed to a pagoda. Tseng was by now sufficiently drunk that it took him a split second to realise what was about to happen, and he did not move as swiftly as he would otherwise have done to turn the television off.

            "Stop," cried Tifa. "Don't touch that dial. That's Yuffie. What's she doing?"

            Here in Edge, it was night. In Wutai it was late afternoon. A flattering, golden light.

            "Who's that on the balcony with her?" said Tifa. "It looks like - "

            Tseng rose and went into Elmyra's kitchen, stood in the middle of the floor pressing his knuckles into his forehead.

            "I don't believe this," Tifa cried from the living room. "This can't be happening. Tseng, is this real?"

            "Yes."

            "No, it can't be. It's not possible. She never said anything to us."

            "I imagine she knew you would disapprove."

            "Were you a part of this?"

            "That's a unintelligent question."

            "Do you mean - You knew, and you didn't tell me?"

            "If Lady Kisaragi chose not to tell you, it was hardly my place to break her trust. In any case, until today the information was classified -"

            "Don't give me that!" She came storming into the kitchen, burning with righteous indignation; he could almost smell the smoke coming out of her ears. He took his hands away from his face and tried to pull himself together, but he couldn't quite manage it; he was a little drunker than he'd realised, and anyway, she had already seen him standing - swaying - in the middle of the floor like someone who had no idea which way to turn.

            "Are you all right?" she asked.

            "Of course. Just - that wine is strong."

            "Sit down." She pulled out a chair for him, so now of course he had to sit or fight her over it. He sat.

            She sat down opposite him, propped her elbows on the table, leaned forward to say with great earnestness, "We have to stop this."

            "No one can stop it. It's what they want."

            "I refuse to believe that Yuffie wants this. She's always hated ShinRa."

            "She used to hate ShinRa. Recently, she seems to have undergone a change in heart."

            "Don't be so flippant. Somebody must be forcing her." Her face darkened. "Are _you_ forcing her - "

            "Nobody is forcing her."

            "Her father - he's always putting pressure on her - "

            "Nobody put pressure on her. _She_ put the pressure on Godo. She likes him, Tifa."

            "She likes his pretty face, you mean. She's nineteen years old. She doesn't know what she wants."

            "How old were you when you fell in love with Strife?"

            Her scowl deepened. "You can't compare that with this. It's a completely different situation. She doesn't love him." Tifa paused. "Does she?"

            "Do you think I can read hearts?"

            "Oh, I think you're pretty good at working out what's going on with people. You would know if they were in love with each other. Which means they're _not,_ " she concluded triumphantly.

            "Or not yet. Or not completely. It all depends how you define the term They're - intrigued by each other. It's only natural. They were both born into positions of leadership, and both of them are eager to put their mark on their worlds. Both of them relish a challenge. Neither one of them likes to be told they can't do something." He paused. "But at the same time, neither one of them is as self-centred as they might first appear. She can be charming when she makes the effort, and he is - not unlovable. And he wants her. He finds her fascinating. I think they have as much chance as anyone of being happy together."

            Tifa sat with her hands over her mouth, thinking. Finally she looked at him and said, "That actually makes sense."

           "Most of Rufus's ideas do, once you've had a little time to get used to them."

            "This was his idea? Somehow, I'm not surprised. Shinra's been trying to get its hands on Wutai for decades."

            Her choice of words was painfully apt. He pulled a hand down his face and said, "It's an alliance, not a takeover. Your friend is astute and she drives a hard bargain. I think that's part of her appeal for him, frankly. They'll make a good partnership."

            "But - "

            She wasn't just angry. She wasn't just puzzled. She was hurt; he saw that now. She would have preferred to believe that Yuffie was being forced against her will. That would have been easier to understand.

            Tifa pulled one of the bottles on the table towards her, unscrewed the top, and reached across to the drying rack for another couple of glasses.  She filled one up and pushed his over to him, then filled the other for herself.

            He said, "They're both young and idealistic - "

            "Rufus Shinra?" she snorted.

            "These days, everyone's trying to build a better future. It's merely a question of scale. You're working to make a future for Denzel and Marlene. Yuffie wants a better future for Wutai. And Rufus... You have to understand, Rufus was brought up believing the world belongs to him, that it's his responsibility. And whatever else you may think of him, he takes his responsibilities seriously. He doesn't want the Shinra Inc the Old Man made to become his own legacy. He aspires to build a better future for this planet, and he no longer believes that Reeve is the man to do it."

            "So - They're going to gang up against Reeve?" said Tifa.

            "They're merging their resources to work towards a global order that's more in line with their shared vision of a sustainable future." Tseng could spin this kind of sentence in his sleep.

            "But Yuffie and Reeve are so close. Why would she do this to him?"

            Tseng shrugged. "Something you don't know about your friend. She's a political animal. The W.R.O.'s flaws are becoming more evident. At this moment, it's a quasi-military operation with more gunpower at its disposal than NeoShinRa and Wutai put together." He tugged his chair a little closer to the table, leaned forward to emphasise his words. "Tifa, I know for a fact that you and Strife have both refused requests from Reeve to work with the W.R.O. You keep a certain distance from him. Why?"

            The question seemed to make her uncomfortable. She looked away. "My family needs me. I have a business that takes all my time. I have no interest in politics. And I don't trust big organisations."

            "Hmm. Tifa, listen. This marriage _is_ going to happen. Nothing can stop it now - unless one of them dies, and it's my job to ensure that doesn't happen. By whatever means necessary. If you really want to help your friend you'll use your infru - in _flu_ ence with Avalanche to help them accept the situation. Reeve will still have a part to play, don't worry. And I'll tell you this - "

            He pronounced it 'thish'. He heard himself. He hoped she hadn't noticed.

            He went on, "Marrying Lady Yuffie will benefit Rufus financially and politically. That's self-efferd - self-eftfet - That's obvious. But if I didn't think that the two of them had a chance to have a real relaish - relationship together, I wouldn't have agreed to be his go-between."

            "So _you_ were the matchmaker?"

            "I was a member of the negotiating team. At Rufus's request."

            Her dark fringe of hair had fallen across her eyes. She blinked at him. "Why aren't you there with him now?"

            "Because it would be awkward."

            "But you're his right hand man. The evil genius behind the throne." She pronounced it "geniush".  

            Tifa sloshed more wine into her glass.

            He took the bottle from her and filled his own. _Liquid courage_. More like liquid recklessness. He was pretty certain he was going to regret this tomorrow, but then, that was the case with so many things in life. It struck him as ironic that he had come all this way to Kalm, the aptly-name Kalm, to avoid getting drunk tonight, only to find the same fate waiting for him here. Reno had offered to take him out to get shit-faced. Maybe that would have been the safer option. Pride made him refuse. He didn't want to look weak. Which was stupid, since Reno already knew his weakness. But he'd felt a great longing to drive out here to see Elmyra and the kid and remind himself that not all his interventions in other people's lives were fated to end in disaster.

            He said, "I was excused from the engagement party in order to spare my feelings."

            She stared at him, a little bleary-eyed.

            He said, "It would be rather awkward, introducing your future wife to the world with your former lover standing right behind you."

            "Wuh - what?"

            "Not former lover. Constant lover. Part-time lover? I still fuck him occasionally, when he lets me."

            Tifa's mouth hung open. He didn't know many other women who could look beautiful while they were doing that.

            "What?" he laughed. A sad sound.

            "You - did you just tell me you're _gay_?"

            "Are you labelling me?"

            She  brushed that aside. "With _Rufus Shinra_?"

            "Well, I'm also sleeping with Elena. And I find you very attractive. Although what man in his right mind wouldn't?"

            "Oh my god," she whispered. "Rufus is gay. Does Yuffie know?"

            He wondered if she'd heard what he'd just said. "I'm afraid I'm not - privy - to what my president whispers in the ear of his bride-to-be."

            "This is terrible. You've done a terrible thing, Tseng. Yuffie needs to know. I have to tell her - " She began to rise, a little unsteadily, from her chair.

            "Tifa, Tifa. Sit down. Stop being so adolescent - "

            She did sit down, or more precisely thudded back down into her chair, but he wasn't sure if this was due to his commanding tone or the inability of her legs to stop wobbling. "Adolescent?" she slurred indignantly.

            "I won't deny that her boyish figure is probably part of her appeal for him, but he is not averse to women. He _likes_ her. And _she_ likes him. They want each other. Please try to get that through your sick - sorry, _thick_ skull."

            "There's no need to insult me."

            "Then be more intelligent. I thought you were a woman of the world."

            "Don't you dare try to make me ashamed of being worried about my friend. Not only is she planning to get married to the one person in the whole world she hates more than anyone else, but you've just told me he's _gay_. What are they going to do about children?"

            Of course, she would ask that. "I expect they'll have them in the normal way. Aren't you listening to me? I'm beginning to wish now I hadn't told you."

            "Then why did you?"

            "Right now I don't honestly fucking know. Because you're here sitting across the table with your big soft eyes and I'm drunk and looking for sympathy? I came here expecting to spend the evening going over Wolfie's report card with Elmyra. I only stayed because she told me you were sad and lonely and needed company."

            "She said that?" Tifa looked stricken. Like a wounded deer. A slender, long-legged, soft-lipped, doe-eyed, big-breasted -

            "What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked her. "Don't you have a bar to run?"

            "I'm allowed to take a holiday, aren't I? I wanted to see Elmyra."

            "Why doesn't Strife ever come with you? Doesn't he want to see her too?"

            "He has come to see her - "

            "Once. Three years ago. What's his problem? Is he ashamed to look Aerith's mother in the face - "

            She picked up her glass and threw its contents at him.

            On balance, he was glad she hadn't punched him in the teeth.

            "Cloud's not the one who should be ashamed of himself," she said.

            She slammed her glass down on the table, turned, and majestically, if unsteadily, stalked out of the kitchen. As she passed through the doorway she paused, clutching onto the frame for a moment until she had recovered her balance. He wondered if maybe now would be the strategic moment to leave. No, he was too drunk to drive. He wiped the plum wine from his face with his tie (the tie might dry-clean; the shirt was ruined), picked up his glass, picked up hers as well, and followed her into the sitting room.

            Snuffling noises were coming from a mound of blanket huddled in the corner of the sofa. All he could see of her were her elbows and her kick-boxer's feet, bar-tender's feet, hardened, calloused, discoloured with the scars of old blisters and long journeys; not pretty, though the toenails had been painted a delicate shade of pink. He felt a strong desire to touch them.

            He sat down at the other end of the sofa. "Misery loves company," he said.

            "What have you got to be miserable about, Turk?" she sniffed from inside the blanket.

            "The man I love has become infatuated with a woman almost half my age, and I can't put off for much longer breaking the heart of a woman who loves me, which will probably cause her to have a nervous breakdown. How about you? Has Strife gone missing again?"

            A choked sob. "I miss - my mother," Tifa cried.

            This was not what he had expected. After a moment he said, "I'm sorry," because he couldn't think of any other suitable response.

            "That's why I come here all the time, if you really want to know. To get some mothering from somebody who cares about me."

            He had no idea what to say.

            Tifa wiped her nose. "I was so angry when she died. So _angry_. At her. I was seven. When I think that I was the same age then that Denzel is now, I just...  Sometimes I just - hated her for abandoning me. I think I even frightened my father. He hired Master Zangan to teach me martial arts to try to channel my aggression. But what I needed was my _mother_."

            Her tears were having a sobering effect on him. "Tifa, please - "

            "I thought that as I grew older I'd get over wanting my mother, but it's been the opposite. I miss her so badly it _hurts_. I'm tired of always being the mother. Just for once I wish I could be somebody's child again. I wish I could just _talk_ to her. Elmyra is lovely and I love her, but it's not the same. I want my _own_ mother. Someone who loves me just the way I am and makes me feel like I'm the most important person in the world."

            _Don't we all?_ thought Tseng.

            He said, "I'm sure that's how you make Marlene and Denzel feel."

            "And Cloud," she said bitterly. "Let's not forget Cloud, the biggest little boy of them all."

            The moment the words were out of her mouth she regretted them. He could tell, because she yanked the blanket off her head and gave him a baleful look, as if he, and not she, were the one who had uttered that disloyal thought.

            "It's not his fault," she informed him.

            "I didn't say it was,"

            "Physically he's twenty-five, but mentally he's still sixteen years old."

            "He has a lot of living to catch up on," said Tseng, who was thinking of Rufus.

            "He has a lot of growing up to catch up on, too. I know he loves me. I _definitely_ know he needs me. If it weren't for me he'd never have a clean pair of underwear." She laughed. A sad sound. "That's romantic, isn't it?  I try to be understanding. Riding around the world on Fenrir, sleeping under the stars, fighting monsters, waiting for adventure to find you... I understand the appeal of that, of _course_ I do. I never felt more alive than when we were hunting Sephiroth, when we'd wake up each morning not knowing if we'd live to see the sun go down or what monster or Turk was lying in wait for us around the next corner. Those were dreadful days, but they were wonderful, too. There are times when _I_ wish I could turn back the clock. But we can't. There are the children now. We have to move forward. It's - what was that thing you said?"

            "Building the future?"

            "How can I build a future with someone who's stuck in the past like a perpetual teenager? He comes and goes at all hours, he never tells me where he's going or how long he'll be, he leaves his phone on voice mail and never gets back to me. He makes a mess wherever he goes. Yesterday I actually caught myself telling him that he treated our house like a hotel. And you know what he said? He said, well, it _is_ a bar."

            Tseng tried to stifle his smile, but Tifa was observant.

            "Don't say it," she warned him. "I know it was funny. Denzel was laughing his head off.  I wish I could laugh to, but I can't, because I'm the mother. I'm always the mother.  Whenever I tell him he needs to keep more regular hours and spend more time at home, he uses his delivery business as an excuse - but honestly, if I didn't take the orders for him and keep his books, he wouldn't _have_ a business. And I don't mind... I mean, I want him to be happy, and I don't mind helping him out. But... sometimes I wonder if he's _ever_ going to grow up. Literally. Look at Vincent. He's stuck at twenty-five. If Hojo did the same kind of thing to Cloud, then I might spend my whole life waiting for somebody who's going to be sixteen years old forever."

            She pulled her knees up to her chin and looked at Tseng with those big, soulful, wine-coloured eyes. He was still holding her glass in his hand. The second bottle on the table had some wine left in it. He filled the glass and handed it to her. She drank.

            "I used to think it was Aerith coming between us," she said. "I thought the problem was that he couldn't get over losing her. He was stuck on a memory. But honestly, I don't know how much of what he felt for her was - is - him, and how much is Zack. I don't think he knows either.  And anyway, the problem is much bigger than Aerith. She's part of the past that he's stuck on.  I'm part of the here and now. And our here and now is so much less glamorous than our past. I said to him yesterday, I said, Cloud, I think you'd probably be _glad_ if Sephiroth reincarnated again. I think you'd be happy if you could go on fighting the same battles for the rest of you life."

            Tseng felt a momentary fellowship with Strife. The night before last, Elena had told him that his inability to fully commit to a relationship was due to the repressed trauma of having lost so many colleagues over the years, which meant that he now instinctively protected himself by keeping everyone at arm's length on the other side of his emotional shield wall. Why was it that all women seemed to feel the need to do this?

            "I said to him, Cloud, I already have two children. I don't want to be your mother. I want to be your partner. I'm a _woman_. I need you to be my man. I need you to be my lover. Is that too much to ask?"

            Tseng's sense of fellowship with Cloud evaporated.  Any man who needed to be _nagged_ into making love to this woman  had no right to call himself a man at all.

            "Well," Tifa went on, " _That_ scared him off.  He was out the front door before you could say  'wark', jumped onto Fenrir and roared off down the road, and I have not seen or heard from him since."

            Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. "I _know_ it's not his fault. I don't want to give up on him.  We've been through so much together. But I just don't think he wants me in that way. He makes the effort, but... that's just it, he has to make an effort. He has so little interest in the physical side of things. I'm always the one who initiates it. I'm afraid that's something else Hojo took from him. And I love him so much - he is _so_ dear to me - but I can't live like that. I can't accept a sexless relationship. It's killing me inside."

            He put a hand on her bare foot, the only part of her that lay within easy reach. The gesture could have been interpreted as a simple offer of comfort, like a pat on the shoulder. When he touched her, she gave a little involuntary shiver. He ran his thumb lightly across the sensitive skin of her instep. She watched him do it. Her toes twitched.

            He looked at her. She looked at him. She wasn't crying any more. Her eyes were all pupil, huge, sultry - and what had never been more for him than an idle, passing fantasy became a real and immediate probability. He caught his breath.

            Under his hand her foot moved. _Go on_. He brushed his fingertips across the top of her foot, where a delicate knob of bone formed the arch's apex and the tendons flexed like tiny hawsers beneath the surface of the skin. He ran his hand up her leg, under the blanket, pausing for a moment to squeeze her calf gently before coming to rest on her knee. Her muscles were firm and well-defined and her skin was cool and silky. He hoped she was going to let this go somewhere.

            "That feels good," she said. "You have a light touch."

            "Are you calling me light-fingered?"

            "I don't know. Are you thinking of stealing something from me?"

            "I'd rather give you something. If you'd like."

            Her reply was to stretch out her leg and press the sole of her foot into his crotch. He was already more than half-hard. Her toes, like little fingers, groped  round the outline of the erection pressing against the fabric of his trousers. He swallowed a gasp.

            "You can give me a kiss," said Tifa. "If _you_ like."

            He leaned forward -

            "Wait," she commanded. "Your shirt's all sticky."

            "Whose fault is that?"

            "You got what was coming to you. I don't want my top ruined. Take it off."

            His hands moved towards the zipper fastening the front of her sweater. She slapped them away. "Not _my_ top. Yours. Let me see you."

            He shrugged off his jacket and laid it to one side, unbuckled his shoulder holster and placed it on top of the jacket, loosened the knot of his tie, pulled it over his head, untucked his shirt, unbuttoned it, cast it aside. Tifa never took her eyes off him. His heart was pounding.

            "Your scar," she said.

            He had many scars. Many of them were from wounds that had nearly killed him. But she only had eyes for one, a clean, thin, silvery seam running from just below his heart to just beside his navel.

            "Strife must have one like it," he said.

            "No. I do. He doesn't. Cloud doesn't have any scars. He doesn't scar. Nothing leaves a permanent mark on him. Let your hair down," she ordered him.

            He reached behind his head and untied the leather bootlace that kept his hair bound in a ponytail. Set loose, it fanned across his back and looped around his shoulders.

            Tifa sighed. "Why are all the most beautiful men gay? All right, now you can kiss me."

            He began by applying the tip of his tongue to the corner of her mouth. She squirmed a little, pleasurably. He nibbled along her bottom lip, covered her mouth with his. She tasted of plums as far as his tongue could reach. He would get drunk all over again, kissing her.

            "Stop," she murmured.

            He stopped.

            "You're very obedient," she said. "It's kind of exciting. Is that how Rufus trained you?"

            " _You're_ very drunk."

            "I am only a little drunk. Just enough drunk. When I'm sober I'm far too prudish to take advantage of drunken gay Turks who've been trained to do anything I say."

            "I think this has gone far enough - "

  
            "No," she said. "I'm enjoying myself. Let's go on. Kiss me again. Kiss me the way you kiss Rufus."

            "Tifa - "

            "For once in my life I want to experience how it feels to be kissed by someone who loves me like a man. That came out wrong. Just do it.  Pretend I'm him."

            She closed her eyes. As if that were all it took for him to forget exactly who was in his arms, and who wasn't. Her body, though equally strong and muscular, had a pliability that Rufus's lacked. She was compact, solid; Rufus was a little on the lanky side. Her flesh was soft and yielding in places where Rufus's flesh was hard. Her skin was warmer, more velvety. Her hair smelt different. And those two plump mounds pressing into his bare chest were impossible to ignore.

            He kissed her much more violently this time, one arm snaking round her waist to bend her backwards, spine, ribs, neck straining, grinding their lips together until he tasted blood, sucking hard on her tongue, forcing his own deep between her teeth, then break off to bite up her neck to her ear-lobe.

            "Unh," she gasped, breathing hard. "Do you squeeze Rufus's tits when you kiss him?"

            "Yours are a bit more of a handful," he whispered in her ear.

            "Do you like them?"

            "They are glorious."

            "Do you want to see them?"

            "It would be an honour."

            Tifa sat up a little, and he shifted backwards to give her some elbow room.  She began to pull down the zipper of her sweater, then hesitated. "You know I told you there's a scar."

            "Scars don't interest me. I have more than enough of my own."

            "It's pretty ugly."

            "I'll be too busy admiring your breasts to notice."

            "All right, then. Here we go."

            She took off her top and with one hand unclipped the front of her lacy bra.

Her breasts burst forth in all their glory; he could think of no other way to describe the spectacle of their being setting free. They were everything he had imagined, rounded, firm, shapely, gravity-defying in a way that almost defied belief.  It seemed impossible that anything (or pair of things) so utterly perfect could be real. For several seconds he could do nothing but stare at them reverently.

            "Touch them," she said.

            He dropped a quick kiss on each, by way of introducing himself and to show his respect. He wasn't sure what to do about the scar.  It was unmissable: a jagged red diagonal that began below her left collarbone, cut into the top of her left breast, furrowed across her sternum, and finally tailed away beneath the upcurve of her right breast. In several places along its length, small red keloids had formed. His scar had healed neatly because, after being rescued from the jungle, he had received the best medical treatment gil could buy. She had been carried through the Nibel mountains on an old man's back for three days and nights, kept alive by whatever potions or herbs he could scrounge together.  When she became aware that he was studying her scar, she crossed her arms over her chest. "I won't lie and say it's beautiful," he told her. "But it doesn't spoil them. In a way, it enhances them. The contrast."

            "Cloud doesn't like the feel of it. He doesn't even want to have to see it. He always wants to keep the light off."

            "He probably feels responsible."

            "I think every time he sees it, he's reminded of Aerith. I think sometimes he can't understand why she's dead and I'm alive."

            "Sephiroth wasn't trying to kill you. Or me. We were simply obstacles in his path." He took hold of her wrist and tugged it gently, a wordless request for her to drop her defenses. She tensed.

            "Is it sensitive?" he asked.

            "A little."

            "I'll be careful. Or do you want to stop now?"

            "No - "

            She searched his face. He didn't really know what she was looking for, but whatever it was, she found it. Slowly she lifted her arms away from her chest, stretched them up above her head, crossed at the wrist, elbows resting on the arm of the sofa. "Go on," she said.

             For a while he contented himself with exploring their shape, trailing the back of his hand lightly round one breast, then crossing over and round the other in a lazy figure of eight, taking care to avoid touching her scar. Soon her heavy breathing became eager panting. She was even more turned on than he was. Good. He wanted this to be good for her.

            "Your upper body musculature is magnificent," he told her.

            "Is that supposed to be dirty talk?"

            He touched his tongue to her nipple. She whimpered. "Get on with it."

            He took the other nipple into his mouth, pinched it gently with his teeth, let it slide down his tongue. She shuddered and moaned. "Could I make you come like this?"

            "I don't know. Try?"

            He would have been happy to spend a whole hour pleasuring her breasts, rolling her nipples on his tongue till his jaw ached, slowly teasing her to climax; but Tifa was beginning to show signs of frustration, and he didn't know how much more time they had before Elmyra and Sigurd came back. His fingers were shaking as he unbuttoned her shorts. Once they were undone she pushed his hands away and kicked the shorts off, pulled down her pants and kicked them off too. He knelt on the floor and ran his tongue up her slick, trembling thigh. "Don't," she said.

            "I won't if you don't want me to. Don't you like it?"

            The tortured look on her face could have been mistaken for pain. She slid a little further down the sofa, spread her knees a little wider for him. Yes. Go on. Please.        

            It surprised him how muted she was. Even when her fingers were digging into his scalp and her body had started thrashing from side to side, she clenched her teeth and muffled her moans, breathing hard through her nostrils. Was this something she had taught herself to do, maybe on their long journey in pursuit of Sephiroth? The walls of country inns could be paper thin. Or was it her natural reserve? He would have loved to coax some real screams of raw pleasure from her, maybe even a few swear words. He didn't think he had ever heard Tifa swear.

            "Stop," she gasped, "It's enough, stop - "

            He planted a kiss on her quivering belly and pulled himself up onto the sofa to lie beside her, using his fingers to brush away the strands of hair stuck to her flushed face. Her heart was still pounding. She gazed at him with heavy-lidded eyes, sleepy, almost drugged-looking.  "All right?" he asked.

            "Mm. What about you?"

            "What about me?"

            "It's my turn - to make you happy."

            "What do you suggest?"

            She rolled onto her side, lifted a hand to his cheek; she ran her fingertips over his eyebrows, touched the mark between his eyes. "You and Rufus must be so hot together," she murmured dreamily. "I wish I could see it. He's so fair and you're so - sombre. Like shadows making love to sunshine. I want you to do to me what you do to him."

            She had succeeded in shocking him. "I'm not doing that."

            "You can pretend I'm him. I don't mind."

            "I mind. I want to make love to _you_."

            "But you have to do what your President says."

            A part of him wished she would stop this. Another part of him was strongly tempted to let her go on. Her hand had begun wandering down towards his stomach. If  it continued its path, in another minute or so he would lose the power to refuse her anything. 

            He caught her wrist. "I'm not going to do anything that might hurt you. Have I done anything to hurt you yet?"

            "I want to know how it feels."

            It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if she had pretended he was Cloud. He didn't mind if she had. He wasn't going to judge her. But for himself, he'd never pretended. He didn't want to start down that slope now.

            "I'm here with you," he said. "This is what I want, this beautiful woman in front of me. Why would I want to pretend she's someone else?"

            He was astonished to see her blush, a delicate pink bloom spreading across her lovely face to the tips of her ears, and down that graceful neck to those splendid breasts.

            "You," she said, "Are the most polite man it has ever been my pleasure to get naked with."

            "Thank you. Now think of something else. We need to hurry, Elmyra and Pedersen will be home soon."

            She grinned. He would never have thought she could make a grin look so naughty. "You're still half dressed," she said. "Ley's start by getting your clothes off. Lie down -"

            She took off his shoes and socks and kissed the soles of his feet. She unbuckled his belt and licked his stomach. She pulled off his trousers and nipped his thighs. When she put her hand inside his boxer shorts and closed her hand round it, he couldn't hold back a groan.  She smiled at him. "The tables have turned, Turk. I'm thinking of all kinds of things. Did you know I used to play the piano?"

            "We haven't got all night," he gasped. "Please, just fuck me."

            She slid her body up his. Her hair trailed across his chest. Her nipples brushed his thighs. "Hurry," he said. Pulling herself into a sitting position, she straddled his body and lowered herself onto him. She didn't have a lot of technique, something which he put down to lack of experience rather than lack of natural ability, because she was certainly giving it her all. He tried to keep his hands at his sides. He wanted to let her set the pace. But she was so slow. Too slow. He couldn't stand it anymore. Taking hold of her hips, his thumbs pressing bruises on the crest of her hip-bones, he thrust up into her, faster. She was panting too now, laughing, gasping, moaning; she was the one telling him, "Hurry, hurry." Her breasts bounced wildly; he couldn't have caught them if he'd tried. With such a splendid view before him - her tits, her curves, her dark cloud of tousled hair, her glowing eyes - why would he want to pretend that he was somewhere else, or that she was somebody else, different from her in every possible way?

            By an effort of will he remained focused on her almost until the very end. Feeling his climax approaching, his eyes closed of their own accord, and then the longing, which he'd managed to keep at bay as long as he could see her, overtook him.

            At least he didn't say the name aloud. He managed to save himself from that particular humiliation.

            "Phew," she cried.

            Sweaty, satisfied, she collapsed onto his chest and started kissing him: corner of the mouth, cheek, brow. Contented little butterfly kisses. "That was good," she said. "Thank you."

            "My pleasure."

            She giggled. Her mouth was right by his ear. "What?" he said.

            "For someone who just told me he's gay, you certainly know how to make a woman happy."

            He was beginning to get a little tired of this joke - but since he hadn't pulled her up on it earlier, there was no point in starting now. "I'm a jack of all trades. Turks have to be."

            "Jack of all trades is master of none. Nobody could say that about you, could they?"

            He stroked her hair. This was always the awkward part. She wanted to cuddle and talk. He wanted to get up and put some distance between them, reclaim himself, reaffirm his boundaries. Elena would say he couldn't feel easy until he'd mended the breach in his wall. But at the same time he didn't want to hurt Tifa's feelings or make her think he didn't value what she'd given him. They had been good to each other. It would be a shame to spoil that now.

            "This feels so strange," she said. "I hope I'm not going to hate myself in the morning."

            "I hope so too. You don't deserve that."

            "I haven't felt this relaxed in ages. You're very comfortable. I'd like to just fall asleep right here."

            "We have to get up and put this place to rights. Elmyra will be back soon."

            "I know. She's pretty broad-minded, but finding the two of us like this - we can't do that to her. I'll get up now."

            She peeled herself off him, rolled away onto the floor and began hunting for her clothes. He pulled on his trousers, went to the bathroom, washed his hands, his face, scrubbed his fingernails, washed out his mouth, washed his crotch. There was every chance Elena might be sitting waiting on his doorstep when he got home.

            He returned to the sitting room. Tifa wasn't there, but one of the sofa cushions was missing. He  walked through into the kitchen, where he found her putting the cushion cover into Elmyra's old-fashioned hand-wringer washing machine. His work shirt and tie lay on the table. Tifa poured some salt on the stain and rubbed it briskly between her fists. "I'll tell her we spilled some wine. That's not a lie," she said as she stuffed the shirt and tie into the machine and switched on the cycle. "You can't go home like that. I'll get you one of Sig's shirts. Wait here."

            He didn't really think about anything much as he stood there listening to the laundry go round in the tub, waiting for her to come back with a clean shirt so he could put it on and go home. He felt pleasantly sated, a little tired, and still not entirely sober; he would sleep well tonight, barring disturbances of one kind or another. But nothing had changed. Not that he had expected it to. He doubted whether anything had changed for her either, although she would probably be a little less naggy for the next few days.

            She brought him an old blue cotton shirt, very soft, the cuffs slightly frayed, smelling of Elmyra's lavender sachets.

            "Well," she said, buttoning it up for him (she had complained about always having to be mother, but it seemed to come naturally. He let her have her way, because he liked the feel of her fingertips brushing against his chest. He wasn't quite yet ready to let her go), "That was definitely the _last_ thing I expected to happen when I came here tonight," she said.

            "For me, too. I didn't know you would be here."

            "Just don't say it was a mistake, okay?"

            "I had a good time. You had a good time. It wasn't a mistake."

            She smoothed his collar. "It's funny. I don't feel in the least bit guilty."

            "You need to do something for yourself once in a while."

            "This is never going to happen again, you know," she told him sternly. "I love Cloud."

            "Understood."

            "And you are not to tell anyone. _Especially_ not Reno."

            He raised an eyebrow. "Tifa..."

            "Yes?"

            "You know me better than that by now." He paused. "And if you will accept my advice on this - Don't ever tell Cloud, no matter how much you feel tempted to, or how angry he makes you. Unburdening ourselves merely means someone else must shoulder our burdens."

            "What a serious man you are. Will you tell Elena?"

            "I don't like being cruel if I can avoid it. And in any case - "

            _It didn't mean anything._

            "I need to get my gun," he said.

            She followed him into the sitting room, stood with her weight thrown on one hip, arms folded. "Will you tell Rufus?"

            Tell, tale, tittle-tattle. "To be frank," he told her, "He has more important matters on his mind right now."

            "I think it's all going to work out," she said. "Be patient. You just have to wait. He'll come back to you. I know he will."

            "Rufus isn't a boy any more. I think - " He paused to tighten the buckle on his holster - "He's outgrown me."

            "If I had someone like you waiting at home for me, I would come back. And Cloud always comes back to me, no matter how far he goes or how long he goes for. Some people are just meant to be together."

            "I'm a little surprised to hear you say that," he told her honestly. "Aren't you more worried about your friend?"

            "I think this marriage is a bad idea anyway. Yuffie's always taking things that don't belong to her.  We usually manage to get them back.  She has a short attention span. You should encourage Rufus to ask for a long engagement."

            She was determined to send him on his way with hope in his heart. It was rather touching. Really, she was too good for Strife - and far, far too good for him. "You'll tell Elmyra I couldn't stay?" he asked. She nodded.

            On his way out the door, on an impulse he turned back and kissed her cheek. "You are lovely," he said. His reward was to see that pretty blush once again suffusing her skin. He'd made someone happy tonight. It was a memory worth holding onto.

            He was getting into the car when she came running after him, holding a bottle of Elmyra's wine in each hand. "You did promise," she said.

            He didn't remember promising, but he didn't mind. If they weren't to Rufus's taste, as seemed likely, he could drink them himself, or share them with Elena. No, on second thoughts, that wouldn't do. He laid the bottles on the back seat, taking care that they didn't touch each other, and drove away into the night. Every time he glanced in the rear-view mirror, for as long as Tifa remained in sight, she was still standing where he had left her, arms folded, her eyes followed his tail-lights.

            He thought back to the first time they'd met, she ( _slutty barmaid; terrorist scum; murderer)_ glaring up at him from the support pillar platform, her gloves spotted with Reno's blood, and he ( _Shinra dog! Vermin! Turk!)_ staring her down with equal venom, his hand tingling from the slap he'd just delivered to Aerith's cheek for daring to dirty herself by association with such low-lifes. We _will_ win, he had thought, and you _will_ lose, but it hadn't turned out that way; they had all lost things that were precious to them, and sometimes the pain of that loss was so great you felt that you couldn't go on living with it any more - but you did, because you had no choice, and after a while it got better.

            Surely not even Reeve's fortune-telling Cait could have foreseen that one day these two adversaries, terrorist and Turk, would make love together on the living-room sofa in Aerith's mother's house and have no regrets about it afterwards.  Such strange things kept happening. There was no telling what life held in store around the next corner. That was why one kept going, he supposed, even when the days grew so dark it looked as if the sun would never rise again. You just had to keep on living, in order to find out what would happen next.

  

**Author's Note:**

> This fic feels like my love-letter to a fandom that has given me so much pleasure over the years. It took its inspiration from a thread at thelifestream.net asking people to post their suggestions as to what happened to various NPCs after Meteorfall. Someone said that Cloud would have looked after Elmyra, but I thought it would be much more likely that Tseng would take on this responsbility, since Cloud barely knew Elmyra whereas Tseng had a relationship of sorts with her going back many years. Initially this was meant to be a story about Elmyra, but perhaps inevitably became a story about Tseng, and then turned into some Tseng/Tifa sexy times. It's a rare pairing that I've always wanted to write. 
> 
> This is also the most explcit story I've even written. I really wanted to see if I could write some angst-free, happy, no strings attached sex that left both parties feeling good about themselves afterwards. This story is meant to be funny and sad, hopeful and elegiac in equal parts, but that's a tough tightrope to walk. Please let me know if the sex is so lolworthy that I should take this fic down before I embarass myself. 
> 
> PS Wolfie is absolutely not Tseng's kid, just in case I didn't make that clear enough. In my authorial mind the sex was completely consensual, but I understand that for some people this would be an issue since alcohol was involved. All I can say is, they had no regrets.


End file.
